An ever-increasing amount of information is available through computing devices that are communicationally coupled to one another through computer networks, such as the ubiquitous Internet and World Wide Web. Consequently, users increasingly turn to search engines to find the information for which they are seeking. As will be known by those skilled in the art, such search engines provide searching services whereby they compile indices of the information available through interconnected computing devices, which are communicationally coupled to such search engines, and then let users efficiently search for information that is relevant to a search query provided by that user to such a search engine.
Initially, the results, provided by a search engine, to a query were little more than pointers or identifiers of information that was determined to be relevant to, or responsive to, the query. As the amount of information available through such search engines increased, the chances of a user finding the specific information for which they were searching decreased. As a result, users were often forced to browse through a series of collections of information, such as the ubiquitous webpages, before they found that for which they were searching. More particularly, users would often select one of the results provided by the search engine, download the identified information from another computing device via a network communications, review the downloaded information, determine that the downloaded information was not what the user was searching for, return to the set of results provided by the search engine, select another one of the results provided by the search engine, download that identified information from yet another computing device, and so on. As will be recognized by those skilled in the art, each attempt by the user to access the information that was identified by the search engine as being responsive to the user's query results in the user expending time and resources to obtain such information from another computing device via a network communications.
As search engines became more advanced, and as the quantity of information available through network communications continued to increase, search engines would provide, in response to a user's query, not only a pointer or identifier of information that was determined to be relevant to, or responsive to, the query, but also a “snippet” of textual information from the information that was determined to be relevant to the query to enable the user to more accurately determine whether to download the remainder of the information or whether the information identified as being relevant to, or responsive to, the query was not, in fact, what the user was searching for. Unfortunately, the results to a user's search query are wholly textual and are provided as a list, even when those search results include snippets of textual information from the information identified in the search results as being responsive to the user's search query. Such a textual listing limits the scope of the information that can be provided and also is sub-optimal for modern computing devices, such as those that implement a touch-based user interface. Additionally, the amount, and type, of information on which to base decisions regarding the usefulness and relevance of search results has also increased, and simple textual listings can be inadequate to convey such additional information or how it factors into the results being presented in response to the user's search query.